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How Unreal Renders a Frame

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Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#41

Post by hyperpallium »

bobthedino wrote: post #21
test1235 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it comes down to requirements. If games aren't running smoothly, people simply won't play them. Business apps have it a lot easier - the users are more forgiving, I guess either because they don't have a choice in the matter or any better options.

Also the people who buy business apps are often not the people who actually have to use them every day. So UI/UX ends up being a much lower priority than say cost.

And, if the program processes data too quicky, users think it isn't working. (Managers, perhaps, think it isn't working hard enough.)

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#42

Post by bob1029 »

maccard wrote: post #8
2sk21 wrote: post #6

So all of this processing happens for one frame? And this is going on at 60 Hz?

Yes, and more. You’ve also got a rigid body (physics) simulation, ai/pathfinding, animation, networking, audio and gameplay logic all to run. If you’re making an open world game, you also need to have streaming code to load and unload parts of the game on the fly. It doesn’t always happen at 60hz (which is 16ms total processing time for all the above plus what’s in the post). Some games run at 30hz(33ms), some run un…

To clarify - In many cases you are actually running your physics or game loop at a different rate from the render loop. For instance, in CS:GO you can have a frame rate of well beyond 300, but the game loop (physics/ai/net/logic/etc.) is ticking at 60 (by default) due to the client-server architecture. This type of non-synchronous engine architecture is very complex to build reliably, so unless there is a hard requirement for it (e.g. client-server multiplayer model w/ advanced latency compensation) you will usually find a simpler synchronous approach used unless the underlying engine comes with the async architecture OOTB (UE4).

Some additional reading on the topic:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_Multiplayer_...

https://blog.forrestthewoods.com/synchronous-rts-engines-and...

https://gafferongames.com/post/fix_your_timestep/

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#43

Post by hyperpallium »

maccard wrote: post #8
2sk21 wrote: post #6

So all of this processing happens for one frame? And this is going on at 60 Hz?

Yes, and more. You’ve also got a rigid body (physics) simulation, ai/pathfinding, animation, networking, audio and gameplay logic all to run. If you’re making an open world game, you also need to have streaming code to load and unload parts of the game on the fly. It doesn’t always happen at 60hz (which is 16ms total processing time for all the above plus what’s in the post). Some games run at 30hz(33ms), some run un…

Minor nit: some of those needn't run every frame (ai/pathfinding, gameplay logic). It's also possible to calculate future points and interpolate between them per frame. A nasty trick is to have shadows running at a half framerate (Crysis did this).

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#44

Post by hyperpallium »

avar wrote: post #28
lordnacho wrote: post #14

This is why I don't get why the game industry has such a bad rep for overworking people. It's genuinely hard to do this kind of code so you'd think they take care not to scare away the few people who can do it. I recall at one point Goldmans was bragging to my team about how they'd hired a game dev to do their click-to-trade currency UI. Seemed like the guy found an easier job for more pay.

This is a bit like saying "I don't get why web development is overworking people, just look at all this cool stuff Google is doing with the Go runtime!". Most people who work in the game industry are not doing deep game engine hacking, but doing grunt work like scripting/designing some scene in a giant adventure game who's going to have thousands of those, and all of those need to be finished before the release date.

I wonder what the turn-over is for engine programmers? I'd guess very low.

I wonder how many commercial engine programmers there actually are, anyway? I'd guess very few.

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#45

Post by pault »

visarga wrote: post #7
Nition wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Wikipedia page at least, even just the current version (Unreal Engine 4) has been in development for 14 years now! With 2003-2008 apparently being just Tim Sweeney.

I have high expectations from simulation. I hope they will be able to reach 99.9% realism so we can use it to recreate any situation we want, for fun (games) and profit (pre-training robots). Self driving cars already train on simulated roads because that allows the creation of any scenario. Even human pilots use simulators to train, especially for those rare situations. And since robot training is expensive and slow…

Cool, but what does this have to do with the comment you replied to?

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#46

Post by pault »

Does anyone know of a good book or course that does a deep dive into unreal engine source? I'm trying to level up my graphics programming skills and that seems like it would be an amazing reference, but I don't currently have the knowledge to navigate it myself.

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#47

Post by fnord123 »

staticelf wrote: post #36
hacker_9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not lying, read the actual reviews and don't just look at the review score. The good reviews come from people who don't mind working 60 hour weeks, being paid lower salaries, and getting overworked.

I dont have an account so I can only see 1 review for each company. But it is a bit strange to say that only some reviews count and not the others. Of course most people care if you're being overworked for a small amount of compensation. Your statement is a bit ridicolous.

>Of course most people care if you're being overworked for a small amount of compensation. Your statement is a bit ridicolous.

And yet academia.

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#48

Post by dkersten »

hacker_9 wrote: post #18
lordnacho wrote: post #14

This is why I don't get why the game industry has such a bad rep for overworking people. It's genuinely hard to do this kind of code so you'd think they take care not to scare away the few people who can do it. I recall at one point Goldmans was bragging to my team about how they'd hired a game dev to do their click-to-trade currency UI. Seemed like the guy found an easier job for more pay.

This is just capitalism at work; in the game industry there is no guaranteed reward at the end of the development cycle, so you have to keep up the pressure in order to beat out your competitors, and increase your chances of winning. This leads to crunching, 60 hour weeks and mass layoffs when you lose - lookup any of the top AAA game companies on Glassdoor and you will find they are awful places to work (Projekt Red…

> in the game industry there is no guaranteed reward at the end of the development cycle

The same is true for any product industry. There are things you can do (customer development, short iterations that involve your potential customers, etc) to increase the chances, but if you're not doing work for clients directly, then there is no guarantee.

Note that the "doing work for clients directly" exists in game development too, there are many freelance or services companies that do work for other companies, and from what I hear about the game industry, these have much more guaranteed pay, just like outside of games. Its the "build the product, when its done, hope someone buys it" type of work that has no guarantees, but that is in no way unique to game development.

The difference is, most other industries don't have such crazy crunch times...

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#49

Post by mschaef »

lordnacho wrote: post #14

This is why I don't get why the game industry has such a bad rep for overworking people. It's genuinely hard to do this kind of code so you'd think they take care not to scare away the few people who can do it. I recall at one point Goldmans was bragging to my team about how they'd hired a game dev to do their click-to-trade currency UI. Seemed like the guy found an easier job for more pay.

> Goldmans ... hired a game dev to do their click-to-trade currency UI. Seemed like the guy found an easier job for more pay.

Not necessarily easier... but definitely a different set of difficulties.

Re: How Unreal Renders a Frame

#50

Post by [deleted] »

pavlov wrote: post #27
lordnacho wrote: post #14

This is why I don't get why the game industry has such a bad rep for overworking people. It's genuinely hard to do this kind of code so you'd think they take care not to scare away the few people who can do it. I recall at one point Goldmans was bragging to my team about how they'd hired a game dev to do their click-to-trade currency UI. Seemed like the guy found an easier job for more pay.

Game industry is like Hollywood. There's an endless supply of highly talented hopefuls from all around the world who want to get into the industry more than anything else. The focus of exploitation is just different -- the Harvey Weinsteins of the game industry don't try to sleep with brilliant Romanian programmers, instead they work them to death.

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